Actress Hailee Steinfeld made her MCU debut in 2021 when she starred as Kate Bishop in the Disney Plus series Hawkeye. The Academy Award nominee starred along with MCU veteran Jeremy Renner in the acclaimed TV series. She also reprised her role as Bishop in the recent Marvel film The Marvels.
Steinfeld is one of the rare actors in the MCU who was apparently not auditioned for the role. Marvel CEO Kevin Feige revealed that they offered the role of Kate Bishop to Steinfeld and that they were lucky that she accepted the offer. This makes her one of the privileged few as even top stars like Tom Holland and Zendaya had to audition for their roles.
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Hailee Steinfeld Did Not Audition For Her Role In The MCU
Hailee Steinfeld is no stranger to headlining big-budget projects. She had her huge breakthrough early in her career with the Coen Brothers classic True Grit. The actress was only thirteen when she was chosen for the role and she held her own ground amidst other stars such as Matt Damon, Jeff Bridges, and Josh Brolin.
Steinfeld was even nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance as Mattie Ross. She was also nominated for a BAFTA. She headlined the Transformers spinoff film Bumblebee and even voiced the character Gwen Stacy a.k.a Spider-Gwen in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse and its sequel Across the Spider-verse.
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In 2020, Hailee Steinfeld was chosen to play the role of Kate Bishop in the Disney Plus series Hawkeye. She stared along with Jeremy Renner, who plays the titular Hawkeye. Marvel CEO Kevin Feige mentioned that Steinfeld did not have to audition for the role and that she was directly offered. He said in the press conference (via Heroic Hollywood),
“We were very, very lucky that Hailee was open to this because we very much believed that she was sort of the prototype for the character… As occasionally happens, the dream version of the character agrees to do it…we were very thankful that she wanted to jump into this role because we had a feeling that she would be great, and she is.”
This makes the actress one of the rare talents to actually receive an offer for a Marvel film as many others.
Even Tom Holland And Zendaya Had To Audition For Their Roles In The MCU
Hailee Steinfeld’s offer to play the role of Kate Bishop made sense as she has accomplished a lot in her career. She joins the elite list of actors who did not have to audition for their roles in the MCU franchise. Actors such as Chadwick Boseman, Chris Evans, and Paul Rudd reportedly did not have to audition for their iconic roles.
However, other actors, no matter how big, had to audition. Tom Holland reportedly beat out over 1,500 actors to land the role of Spider-Man. He was up against Sex Education star Asa Butterfield and Timothée Chalamet for the role. His co-star Zendaya, who plays Michelle Jones-Watson also had to audition for her role.
During the promotions for the home video release of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Holland and Zendaya, along with Jacob Batalon who plays Ned watched their audition tapes. The trio were embarrassed by their younger selves, especially Holland and Batalon who had amusing auditions for their roles.
